Of Catalysis and Entropy
by LoLoGreeneVines
Summary: In which little Uryu's discovery of exactly what his father has been up to in the room he keeps locked at all times marks the beginning of the end.


**Author's notes: It's not a secret that I've been struggling to get anything at all done recently, but it turns out that my knee-jerk reactions to my precious baby Uryu Ishida suffering trauma can wind up surprisingly productive. Hmm. I imagine I'll likely be writing more in the near future, when Kubo has had a few more chapters to make my smol child suffer, and I should be looking into sorting out my attention and productivity problems more generally soon, so hopefully that will help. :)**

 **I should warn that this fanfic is a reaction to chapter 659 (because it's heavily implied that that flashback _wasn't_ the first time Uryu saw what he did), and, as such, it contains heavy spoilers.**

 **Onwards! :)**

* * *

Uryu crept towards the door, softly, softly, his little, slender feet making muffled noises on the carpeted floor as he shuffled forwards down the tenebrous hall, his overly-long pyjama legs trailing as he walked. Raising one hand to his face reflexively, he remembered only after having poked himself in the nose that he had dispensed with his glasses, leaving them on the nightstand by his bed. There was naught a couple of lenses could do to help him see in the pitch darkness, after all, and the story he had prepared to cover himself would work better if he looked as though he had simply forgotten about them in his haste to find his father.

It was sheer curiosity that drove Uryu out of bed at eleven o'clock at night, far past his bedtime, an intense curiosity burning with the strength of a supernova regarding the door he was never permitted to cross the threshold of, or even so much as glance inside. The room had been his mother's, a workspace for the sewing she had refused to give up after having married his father, a parlour where she had played the piano for Uryu as he sat on her lap when he was little, the space where she had stored her precious books which lacked in monetary value but had meant the world to her. However, since her death, the door had remained locked, a verboten elephant in the Ishida family manor, where Uryu had noticed his father retreating more and more as the days wore on and the shadows under his pitted eyes grew darker, the desperate glint growing more frantic.

Finally reaching the door, Uryu ignored the inexplicable shiver which raced down his spine upon noticing the light spilling like liquid under the gap. So his father was awake, and holed up in the room...

There was nothing for it. Uryu fumbled in his pyjama pocket for one of Kanae's hair-pins he had stolen from a drawer in his parents'- _Ryuken's_ -room, and gently reached for the doorknob, tracing the intricately detailed metal with his fingers for the spot where he knew he would find the keyhole. He raised the small piece of twisted metal to the door, careful not to make audible scratching noises as he sought the hole, furrowing his brow in concentration. After a few seconds, he felt the pin give, wracked his brains for the instructions he had read in a book his semi-negligent childminder had left lying about, and poked around in the dark until he heard the sound of the lock clicking. Mentally rehearsing his story one last time, he tossed the hairpin into the shadows and in the direction of the skirting-board where it wouldn't be noticed until he knew he could retrieve it in the morning, lowered his eyelids, rubbed his eyes, and yawned before twisting the doorknob and pushing the door open with a creak.

"Don't come in, Uryu," came Ryuken's voice, his tone urgent, but it didn't quite sink in.

"Daddy, I had a bad dream." Uryu rubbed his eyes and looked up, concentrating on maintaining the expression of mild fear he had spent fifteen minutes carefully honing in the mirror, and found that once he had examined the scene before him he no longer had to pretend to be afraid.

"Damn, I must have forgotten to lock the door. Careless..." Ryuken muttered, almost inaudibly, turning away from his son to adjust his surgical mask and hide the manic glint Uryu had caught in his eye, so that the boy was left staring at the fastenings in the back of his father's scrubs as he awkwardly adjusted his position to block the view of the table in front of him.

"Is... is that mama?" Uryu's voice cracked on the last word, and he was painfully aware of how pathetic he sounded.

Ryuken sighed, his shoulders slumped over the table as though his weariness was physically bearing down on him. "Yes."

Uryu felt as though somehow, he had been expecting this answer, but that didn't render it any less shocking to him. He recalled the image of her sunken, ashen face, and felt a brief lurch in his abdomen as his stomach seriously considered evacuating the rice and mackerel he had eaten for dinner. He swallowed, staring sideways at the wall, but failed to stop his eyes from being repeatedly drawn to the ends of the table he could see either side of his father's billowing protective gear. "Why?"

"It's called an autopsy, Uryu." Ryuken didn't turn around, and his voice was strangely, eerily calm, despite the mania his face had betrayed just a moment ago. "I'm just trying to work out how she died. Lots of people have autopsies when they die."

A tear slid down Uryu's cheek. "You're cutting mama up, aren't you?"

There was a brief silence, punctuated by the clicking of instruments as Ryuken set down a scalpel and picked up a small pair of scissors from the table by his side, still refusing to look at his son. "Yes," he said.

"Oh." Uryu had no idea what else to say, so he just stood there, the enormity of the situation threatening to completely engulf him, torn with the conflict of longing for his mother but being completely and utterly repulsed by the empty shell of her which lay before him, with only Ryuken and a few yards of space serving as an obstacle between the child and his mother's corpse. Unable to take it any more, he began to cry harder. "Daddy, can I have a cuddle?"

His father refused to turn around even a single degree. "Not now, Uryu, I'm busy."

"Oh. Okay," gulped Uryu, turning around and shuffling dejectedly from the room and into the darkness of the hall. He glanced into the shadows and discovered that he had apparently spontaneously developed a fear of lurking monsters with wizened features and colourless complexions, monsters who sung lullabies before making a meal of their sleeping victims, monsters who extended their razor-thin arms as though to cradle him until he bled. He rushed to his bed as quickly as he could, but he already knew that he wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight.


End file.
